The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [84]
After lunch, David dozed in the hammock and Norah lay down on the bed beneath the window. An ocean breeze flowed in; she felt abundantly alive, somehow connected to the sand and the sea by this wind. Howard was just an ordinary person, almost scrawny and beginning to go bald, yet he was mysteriously compelling too, conjured perhaps from her own deep loneliness and wishing. She imagined Bree, delighted with her, laughing.
Well, why not? she would say. Really, Norah, why not?
I’m a married woman, Norah replied, shifting to look out the window at the dazzling, shifting sand, eager for her sister to refute her.
Norah, for heaven’s sweet sake, you only live once. Why not have some fun?
Norah stood, walking softly on the old worn boards, and fixed herself a gin and tonic with lime. She sat on the porch swing, lazy in the breeze, watching David dozing, so unknown to her these days. Notes from Paul’s guitar floated through the soft air. She imagined him, sitting cross-legged on the narrow bed, head bent in concentration over the new Almansa guitar that he loved, a gift from David on his last birthday. It was a beautiful instrument, with an ebony fretboard and rosewood back and sides, brass turners. David tried, with Paul. He pushed too hard on sports, it was true, but he also made time to take Paul fishing or hiking in the woods, on their endless search for rocks. He’d spent hours researching this guitar, ordering it from a company in New York, his face full of quiet pleasure as Paul lifted it reverently from the box. She looked at David now, sleeping on the other side of the porch, a muscle working in his cheek. David, she whispered, but he did not hear her. David, she said a bit louder, but he did not stir.
At four o’clock she roused herself, dreamily. She chose a sundress splashed with flowers, gathered at the waist, thin straps over her shoulders. She put on an apron and began to cook, simple, but luxurious foods: oyster stew with crisp crackers on the side, corn yellowing on the cob, a fresh green salad, small lobsters she’d bought that morning at the market, still in buckets of seawater. As she moved in the tiny kitchen, improvising roasting pans from cake pans and substituting oregano for marjoram in the salad dressing, the crisp cotton skirt moved lightly against her thighs, her hips. The air, warm as breath, glanced across her arms. She plunged her hands into a sink of cold water, rinsing the lettuce leaf by delicate leaf. Outside, Paul and David worked to light a fire in the half-rusted grill, its holes patched with aluminum foil. There were paper plates on the weathered table, and wine poured into red plastic glasses. They would eat the lobster with their fingers, butter running down their palms.
She heard his voice before she saw him, another tone, slightly lower than David’s and slightly more nasal, with a neutral northern accent; crisp air, edged with snow, floated into the room with every syllable. Norah dried her hands on the kitchen towel and went to the doorway.
The three men—it shocked her that she thought of Paul this way, but he stood shoulder to shoulder with David now, nearly grown and independent, as if his body had never had anything to do with hers at all—were clustered on the sand just beyond the porch. The grill gave off its aromas of smoke and resin, and the coals sent a wavering heat into the sky. Paul, shirtless, stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his cutoffs, answering with awkward brevity the questions that came his way. They did not see her, her husband and her son; their eyes were on the fire and on the ocean, smooth as opaque glass at this hour. It was Howard, facing them, who lifted his chin to her and smiled.
For an instant, before the others turned, before